The Oracle – Daughters

The sort of afternoon where bees drone lazily and even geeks feel the pull of nature. The oracle and Watson had just enjoyed scones and cream donated by the wife of an important man who had had his certainties shifted by the old woman and her mountain.
Watson stretched lazily. “You never did finish telling me how you came to stay here.”
“No. I didn’t, did I?” She grinned and he was put in mind of a crocodile in a zoo that had terrified him when he was a small child. “Now where was I?”
Having come to understand that the oracle possessed a mind like a gin trap, Watson wasn’t actually surprised when she homed in on the exact moment when she broke off her story.
“Yes. Right. Anyway. Once the consortium that owns this place understood I was preparing to up sticks they came in with a much better offer. So I stayed.”
“Do they pay you?”
“Yup. I’ve got a nice little nest egg against the day winters up here get too hard for me. Plus, of course I get good food delivered and my living cave is snug and cozy…”
She stopped talking at the sound of laboured breathing from the vertiginous path from the valley gate.
“Scram, boy. And remind me to find out why the bell ain’t working properly.”
He shot into the cave where he composed himself to listen.
The head that appeared over the ridge was balding and red, and glistened with sweat. The rest of the figure was spare and muscular and dressed in the serviceable gear of a well-to-do working farmer. Watson thought he looked rather more sensible than the average supplicant. But looks can be deceiving.
The man bowed and put the basket he was carrying at the oracle’s feet.
“Fresh bread. Our best cheese. Honey from the apple orchard.” Then he stood and sort of scraped his boots on the gravelly ground.
The oracle’s laugh wasn’t unkind, and when she spoke it was without her usual mockery.
“What can the mountain do for you?”
“A man needs a son.” He blurted it out then said no more.
“We could debate that point, but if we pretend I agree with you how is that the business of the Oracle of High Places?”
“Because my wife has given me only daughters.”
“Five, I believe.”
He nodded. “But a man needs sons to carry on his name. It don’t matter if he loves his daughters they say. It don’t matter if he…” He stopped speaking and his face was a study in misery. But he pulled himself together and carried on though it obviously cost him dear. “I have been advised to put Bertha aside and take another wife.”
The oracle hissed. “Advised. By whom?”
“My neighbour. Who put aside his barren wife and took a young widow. She was brought to bed of a fine son last month.”
The oracle sighed and Watson saw the second she rolled her eyes back in her head, because the farmer lost his ruddy colour. She spoke in the rolling cadences of the oracle and her voice echoed around the hilltop.
“Beware the advice of fools. Your way does not march with that of a man who is giving his name to bastard seed.”
She stopped speaking while the man in front of her squawked and shuffled his feet.
“But. But. But…”
“But what?” The oracle was using her normal person acerbic voice.
“The mountain said…”
Then he bethought himself and closed his mouth.
The oracle chuckled. “Oh. One of them things was it?”
He nodded mutely. “Seems like I won’t be getting a son to leave the farm to.” He sounded as if the news weighed him down greatly.
The oracle laughed. “You’ve years in you yet. Go home and await the birth of the tribe of grandsons I see in your future. Don’t be blaming your wife for what fate decreed.”
Watson saw the farmer smile. “That’s true. And me and the old girl have been through a lot together. I wasn’t looking forward to life without her.”
Then he bowed deeply before hurrying off, a much happier man than when he arrived.
The oracle turned her spectacularly gummy grin on Watson.
“You’d have thought a farmer would have a better grasp of biology…”

Jane Jago